The government promised a broad-ranging environmental levy in the last budget speech. Some sensible people inside government appear to have defanged what could have been a very nasty piece of legislation. The Bill that is scheduled to be debated in Parliament on the 19th of March makes provision for the levy to collected by telecom operators and paid to the Telecom Regulatory Commission and then to the Environmental Conservation Levy account of the Consolidated Fund. The other levy collector is the customs. The removal of the complex collection procedure mentioned in the Budget Speech is definitely an improvement.
LIRNEasia’s first book was launched at a ceremony at IIT Madras in December 2007. Three months later, the book is not yet available for sale in a Sri Lankan bookstore. Why? According to Sage India, a respected academic publisher, the book is held up at Sri Lanka Customs. The problem is that it came in the same shipment as a book by an English scholar teaching at the Colombo University which had the word militarization in the title.
Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam – New York Times For months there has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat, according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games. Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits as they traverse the Internet’s pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000. Powered by ScribeFire.
Quality of Service Experience (QoSE) of broadband was a topic that has been discussed in LIRNEasia blog for sometime and we find many readers share the view of the Australian cartoonist who portrayed information superhighway to a modern car with cart wheels – the infrastructure. LIRNEasia’s on-going QoSE benchmarking project aims to find the answer to the question, based on evidence not perceptions, whether the users actually get what has been advertised by the operators. A seminar presenting preliminary results of Broadband QoSE measures, with the participation of Professor Timothy Gonsalves of IIT Madras (who headed the team that developed the methodology) will be held in Colombo on the 18th of March. This is an open event, but prior registration is recommended. (Tel: 011 267 1160, 077 763 6821; e-mail: kapugama[at]lirne[dot]net) Here are more information about the event and broadband quality test plan for those who are interested.
They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know. – New York Times It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist?
Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK) – New York Times Innovation, of course, has always spurred broad societal changes. As telephones became ubiquitous in the last century, users — adults and teenagers alike — found a form of privacy and easy communication unknown to Alexander Graham Bell or his daughters. The automobile ultimately shuttled in an era when teenagers could go on dates far from watchful chaperones. And the computer, along with the Internet, has given even very young children virtual lives distinctly separate from those of their parents and siblings. Business analysts and other researchers expect the popularity of the cellphone — along with the mobility and intimacy it affords — to further exploit and accelerate these trends.
First the EU said: Network interconnection by means of the Internet Protocol (IP) has been a vital enabler of the Internet’s ubiquity and success. IP-based interconnection has usually been achieved without explicit regulatory obligations, and has for the most part been highly effective. Given the rapid evolution of the economic, technological and social environment this study of the European Union investigates whether IP interconnection is still better left unregulated. Martyn Warwick of telecomtv slammed: You have to wonder if some “analysts” live in the same world as the rest of us. Take for example a hefty new report, commissioned by the European Commission and written by a German research organisation, that goes so far as to recommend the abolition of termination fees – on the peculiar grounds that we might as well because, one day, everything will be the Internet anyway.
According to LIRNEasia’s latest comparative study of price and affordability indicators in eight South Asian countries, Bangladesh emerges as having the lowest average monthly cost of using a mobile at all levels of use (low, medium and high) for different tariff plans (prepaid and postpaid). Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka follow closely, while Bhutan, Maldives and Afghanistan are seen to have significantly higher average monthly mobile costs. The study compares mobile tariffs in South Asia using price baskets, derived from those used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The baskets are calculated for low, medium and high users for pre- as well as postpaid tariff plans, factoring in usage charges (voice and SMS), line rental, connection charges (depreciated over a three year period), and applicable taxes. For more information on results and methodology, please click HERE.
On 25 February 2008, LIRNEasia held a public lecture on “Benefits of ICT applications to farmers with emphasis on transaction costs” and it has been covered in the Nation, Morning Leader, Financial Times, and Ravaya.
The cost of international capacity between the US and Asia has dropped dramatically in the past ten years. In 1996, US$10,000 would buy a 64kbps IPLC between Asia and the US. The same money buys a STM-1 (155Mbps) circuit in 2006. Dramatic drops in the price of international capacity as a result of market deregulation in the Asia Pacific is resulting in a shift in the dynamics of Internet traffic, according to a presentation at the APRICOT conference in Taipei this week. Read more.
The Economist is not correct saying ‘No Evidence’ of Internet blocking in Sri Lanka, and in Laos and Cambodia the Internet usage is low so blocking does not make any difference. As shown, even in Asia the attitude of officialdom varies when it comes to filtering content of a social nature. In many places agreements are set with service providers to block nasty stuff such as child pornography. In a few countries intervention is stronger, up to the level of pervasive censorship. This week Pakistan’s block on YouTube accidentally caused an international outage for that website.
Microsoft Gets Record Fine and a Rebuke From Europe – New York Times The European antitrust regulator imposed a record $1.35 billion fine against Microsoft on Wednesday in a ruling intended to send a clear message to the world’s largest software maker — and to any other company — of the dangers of flouting Europe’s competition rulings. Neelie Kroes, Europe’s antitrust regulator, expressed irritation with Microsoft, saying it had not complied with a 2004 ruling. Related Times Topics: Microsoft Corporation The size of the penalty, which surprised lawyers and legal experts, was a clear assertion of the power of the European Commission and its main antitrust regulator, Neelie Kroes, who is its competition commissioner. She has emerged from a lengthy legal battle with Microsoft as possibly the world’s most activist regulator.
Sri Lanka’s state-run Bank of Ceylon has tied up with an Indian mobile commerce firm to start a text message based electronic payment system that could overtake credit card transactions, officials said. Bank of Ceylon’s new service allows its six million customers to use pay shops that join the system at the cost of a text message using a system developed by India’s, PayMate. The mobile transaction service will initially start with selected large merchants like SriLankan Airlines, Odel, Singer, Abans and Stone & String before linking up retailers in rural areas. “This opens a lot of avenues to merchants because we are bringing them six million of our customers,” Bank of Ceylon’s IT chief Nissanka Janaratne said. Read the full report in LBO here.
Pakistani officials have lifted a ban on the YouTube video-sharing Web site, saying that material deemed offensive to Islam has been removed. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered Internet providers to unblock the site Tuesday. In a statement Tuesday, YouTube confirmed the Web site was again accessible in Pakistan. Company spokesman Ricardo Reyes says YouTube took down the particular link on Saturday, after receiving flags from the YouTube community and determining the content violated the Web site’s terms of use. Read the full story in ‘VOA News’ here.
TelecomTV – TelecomTV One – News Google will combine with SingTel, Bharti, Globe Transit and Pacnet to build the mooted Unity cable, connecting Japan to the United States.The $US300 million system was revealed by SingTel and Pacnet this morning. The 7.68 terabit cable is expected to be ready for service in 1Q 2010. NEC and Tyco will build the cable while Pacnet will be the largest investor with two of the five fiber pairs.
In a major development, the Ministry of Communications & IT has cleared applications of nine telecom aspirants and is close to issuing them Letters of Intent (LoIs). This will be followed by issuance of universal access service (UAS) licences and allocation of spectrum. The LoIs will be issued during the week, if not tomorrow. However, the allocation of spectrum would take some time as the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) was finalising the amount of vacant spectrum, sources close to the development said. The proposals of the new applicants were pending with the telecom ministry after the DoT’s approval last month.